Upon viewing the new Shakira World Cup song's video, an African historian friend of mine tweeted "Planning to cringe all month w/ South Africa standing in as the 'real Africa.' Drums + Feathers anyone?" Hopefully the soccer coverage will dig a bit deeper than that, or at least provide the world with a few urban African cliches to balance out the rural ones. On a more positive note, I really like these portraits of South African cyclists, which are paired with interviews about the pictured bikes and (as if they hadn't won my heart already), Google Maps pinpointing each photo's exact location. The photographers are raising money to publish a hardcover book of the portraits.

There’s a cheap/free good music convergence happening at Amazon.com’s mp3 store this week: Emmylou Harris’s splendid, splendid album “Wrecking Ball”, a brilliant sonic reinvention of songs by Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Neil Young, Jimi Hindrix, and Daniel Lanois, is on sale for just $2.99 for the full download.

And as if that weren’t enough, they’ve got a dozen or so world music sampler albums available for free download, including this eight-song compliation from the always-inspiring Soweto Gospel Choir. Did I mention it’s free?

"New high-speed, ultrasound imaging of the human tongue potentially could change how linguists describe 'click languages' and help speech scientists understand the physics of speech production. Here, Ouma Hannie Koerant, a speaker of N|uu, a severely endangered click language spoken by fewer than 10 people in the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, prepares to have her mouth and tongue imaged as she pronounces N|uu words." Hats off to this brave woman and her scientific collaborators in a bittersweet act of last-gasp culture-keeping. Incidentally, the | in N|uu is a dental click (written as c in major South African languages like Zulu and Xhosa; the sound is "comparable to a sucking of teeth"). Those so inclined can also practice their alveolar clicks (q or !), "comperable to a bottle top 'pop'", and their laterals (x or ?), "comparable to a click one may do for a walking horse". There are also lip-smacking bilabial clicks (?), and flat-tongued palatals (?). I did my best to learn basic Xhosa click pronunciation a few years ago when I was reading Zakes Mda's fine novel The Heart of Redness, to make sense of names like Qolorha, Ximiya, and Nongqawuse. Less esoterically, most of us are familiar with the name and San-language voice of N!xau, the late star of the film The Gods Must Be Crazy and its four (!) sequels.

A fable of conflicting values and the mistaken assumption that Hollywood would have sufficiant cultural clout even in a rugged corner of South Africa—it looks like the forthcoming Biblical film epic The Lamb will have to be staged somewhere else. Best quote from the article not in the excerpt below: "The Rev. Cyril Smith, whose cathedral would have been made into a Mexican village film set, says the consortium miscalculated the level of opposition and the legal status of the land."

A filmmaker’s dream of building a Hollywood-style studio in the northern part of South Africa has been blocked after a passionate campaign by the local Khoi-San community. Residents of the remote and desolate town of Pella say they do not care about the millions of dollars promised or the prospect of A-list celebrities flying in on private jets and instead wanted to keep their “sacred” scrubland, which was won in battle by their forefathers.

Desert Star Studios wanted to transform their ancestral lands into a giant studio featuring biblical and cowboy film sets, production offices, stunt tracks, storehouses, and workshops, plus a luxury resort, golf course, and private landing strip. The consortium planned to spend $14 million on the project which it says would create 18,000 jobs and generate a further $14.2 million income for the area over the next 10 years—a huge sum for a relatively poor province.

A visit to the semi-desert area can see its potential. The flat scrubland nestles between giant mountains under clear blue skies. There are hidden valleys cut by tributaries to the mighty Orange River, and one mountain resembling the doomed Israeli fortress of Masada.

But the filmmakers underestimated the will of the local 5,000-strong population who put the spiritual value of the land over any potential economic gain and nixed the plan last month. “No money in the world can buy this land,” says Ina Basson, secretary of the Pella Community Forum. “It is ours and has sentimental value. Our forefathers fought the Germans for this land and had to battle to keep it. They have spilled blood for the land and for us, and it is not for sale. “[The producers] said Mel Gibson and Halle Berry would fly in to do movies, and that Tiger Woods would design the golf course,” adds Ms. Basson. “We don’t care about them. We want to live here.”

One of my favorite Nelson Mandela moments was his brilliant conciliatory gesture when South Africa won the first post-Apartheid Rugby World Cup—donning a Springboks jersey (a symbol par excellance of Afrikaner cultural pride) and coming onto the field to join in the celebrations. I didn't remember the story below, which gets at the beginnings of Mandela's canny and graceful relation to the game.

Towards the end of his 27 years in jail, Nelson Mandela began to yearn for a hotplate. He was being well fed by this point, not least because he was the world’s most famous political prisoner. But his jailers gave him too much food for lunch and not enough for supper. He had taken to saving some of his mid-day meal until the evening, by which time it was cold, and he wanted something to heat it up.

The problem was that the officer in charge of Pollsmoor prison’s maximum-security “C” wing was prickly, insecure, uncomfortable talking in English and virtually allergic to black political prisoners. To get around him, Mr Mandela started reading about rugby, a sport he had never liked but which his jailer, like most Afrikaner men, adored. Then, when they met in a corridor, Mr Mandela immediately launched into a detailed discussion, in Afrikaans, about prop forwards, scrum halves and recent games. His jailer was so charmed that before he knew it he was barking at an underling to “go and get Mandela a hotplate!”